Jeffkun Monogatari
by Luriko-Ysabeth
Summary: Any true fan of the show knows that there is more to Jeffkun the winged teddy bear than first appears. This is a guess of mine as to what, precisely, might be hiding behind that appearance it wandered into my head and wouldn't go away.


  
Sae.  
You've left the portion of the Dreamscape that I control for the realm   
of the subconscious; I wonder what you're dreaming now?  
Be confident in yourself, whatever it is. I know you have the potential:   
it is that which first drew me to you, that and your sorrow.  
It was not such a great thing in the long view that you grieved over,   
but to a child such a tragedy is near the end of the world.  
Why is it that if I can see that, those whose childhood is far less   
distant than mine in space and time cannot?  
Ah, well, no matter.  
Your happy smile -- your innocent joy -- those are the things worth   
preserving. In a world which has changed as much as I remember it doing,   
the little things are all one can hope to protect; and the little things   
make up the totality of that which abides.  
And as others cannot always be there to protect you, you must learn to   
protect yourself.  
  
The world has changed since I was young, and perhaps not for the better.   
The arts of magic, once so prevalent, have fallen into disuse; I believe   
that it may only be you five now, and you are not even from the homelands   
of magic -- magic as I know it: the Orient has its own brand of   
supernatural dealings, allied to but not of 'magic,' and neither I nor   
you are skilled in such ways. Perhaps now that you have defeated the   
tsurinage, those ancient guardians of the Summerlands set wandering when   
the   
pathways were sundered, there will be no more magicians, and the things   
of elektron-power and nucleic-power will be dominant.  
But, Sae, if you are to be the last of my special students, know that   
you are also one of the greatest. If all those whom I had taught were to   
gather in one hall, and a high table set aside for those who had truly   
used their power well and left the world better than they'd found it,   
your seat would not be least at that board.  
I was once, long ago when I was young and the modern calendar had not   
been thought of, myself human.  
You would laugh to think this: my eidolon does not look very human, does   
it? When I was a child, my mother's brother crafted such a thing for me,   
to laugh at and keep away the night terrors. I have remembered it fondly   
ever since, though the night terrors have grown so much greater and more   
terrifying.  
At least, I believe I was then human; she who bore me was human;   
although who or what sired me I do not know and do not care to guess.   
My mother-not did not want me, hated the very sight of me, for I was an   
eternal reminder of her shame when she had been found not to be a maiden   
pure (as she had claimed to be) before her mother's brother's entire   
court. It was her brother who cared for me, who raised me, who sought to   
find ways around the Dooms my mother-not laid on me.  
The world has indeed changed: in the days of my youth, the relationship   
of 'father' was thought of little account, and that of mother's brother   
stood in its place as the parental role. It may be that it was in your   
Eight Islands, Sae, as it was in our Island of the Mighty: your Stormlord   
is given the position of mother's brother to all your emperors since the   
line began.  
And my uncle was all the parent I needed, when I was small. He showed me   
the ways of magic and that of warriorhood, and I chose the path of the   
warrior then. Does that surprise you? I was very young, and my elder   
cousins all yearned to be warriors.  
My elder cousins were raised by the Queen, who was wife to my mother's   
mother's brother. My uncle was seldom permitted to visit them, although I   
often was: the Queen had no liking for him, and the boys had been given   
into her care regardless of his blood ties.  
I disliked the Queen when I was young because she did not care for my   
uncle, the most wonderful person in the world. I told my uncle that,   
once.  
He told me, with an expression on his face that I could not yet   
recognize, that he deserved her scorn: for he and his brother had done   
her one of the greatest wrongs it is possible for one person to do to   
another, and taken by force that which has no value unless it be freely   
given.  
That will *never* happen to you, Sae. I swear that on my blood and my   
wings.  
And yet I was not fully happy when I was small. As I have said, my   
mother-not had laid a Doom on me: that I should never be named unless she   
were to do it.  
When I was the age your sister was when first you met me, my uncle   
tricked a name out of her. You would not find it easy to pronounce:   
'Jeff' is a corruption of a part of my full name, which means the Bright   
One of the Skillful Hand.   
I have grown fond of 'Jeff-kun,' though, in the years since. You do me   
no insult, Sae.  
In her anger, she laid another Doom on me: that I should never bear arms   
and armor unless she should array me in them herself.   
And, as one might have expected, when I was the age you are now, my   
mother's brother again tricked them out of her.  
Sae, do you know what I envy most of all you have?  
Your sister. I would have killed to have a sister; both for herself, and   
for the children she might bear. I should have loved to be mother's   
brother to a whole flock of children, and striven to do as well as my   
mother's brother did for me.  
For when my mother-not found that the one she had armed against   
phantasmic invaders was none other than the child she had caused to come   
into existence, she laid her third and worst Doom upon me: that no woman   
born should ever wed me.  
And my mother's brother responded by making for me a woman of flowers.   
Her name in your tongue would be Hanagao; and she was lovely beyond   
compare.  
Lovely and selfish: for despite all that my uncle could do, he could not   
give her a human heart.  
Your Miyama-sempai reminds me of her; perhaps that is a reason why I do   
not overmuch like the woman.  
Sae, I would far rather you never knew of what happened next. Not that   
my wife betrayed me with another man, and plotted with my lover to kill   
me: that only wounds me in my pride, and I have grown beyond more than   
momentary pain at such petty wounds. Not that they succeeded, and that my   
uncle searched for me until he found my soul in the shape of an eagle and   
my body below it, and worked great magic to bring me back: that is   
important to understand me, and though I will not -- cannot -- speak of   
what it was like to be dead, I can and will praise my mother's brother   
for his care, and say that though he caused me to rise again from death,   
as few before or since have done, since that moment I have never more   
been   
mortal as men are mortal.  
No, what I do not want you to know of is the madness that gripped me   
then. I wanted nothing more than their deaths, and would have stopped at   
*nothing* to gain them. I killed the man, and my uncle transformed my   
so-lovely wife into the shape of an owl rather than let me kill her.  
And when it was over, I was sick and tired, and slept for a long time.   
All the fire had burnt out, and left in its place -- nothing.  
I abandoned the arts of the warrior, after waking from that long sleep.   
All the uses I could then see for such led only to more of that emptiness   
after rage. Instead I pursued magic, throwing all my energy into it to   
keep the Nothing away; and when I had learned all that my mother's   
brother could then teach me, I left for other lands, to learn their ways   
of magic.   
It was when I was in Egypt -- you would be awed at Egypt, Sae; its   
culture may even be older than China's, though the Middle Flower Kingdom   
has outlasted it -- learning from the last of the heirs of the traditions   
of Imhotep, who had none other to whom to pass the accumulated learning   
of one thousand years, that my mother's brother reached me in a dream.  
They were leaving, all of the greatest and oldest of our race; they were   
leaving and taking ship for the Summer Country, for the gates were opened   
and the way was clear, and our old homeland was changing beyond   
recognition. And they could not wait, even for me.  
Three hopes only had they for me, that I might one day join them. It   
might be that they could reach me in my dying, and I would avoid the   
place you call the Yuukai and come instead to the Summer Country.  
It might be that, later, the gates would be opened for others, and I   
might come to the Summer Country in their train.  
And it might be that later I would do deeds of such might that the Gates   
of Summer would be opened for me and me alone; thrice only since the   
stars were kindled and the rain began have they been opened for any less   
than a host, and two of those have been since I parted from my kin.  
I was lonely then as I pray you will never be able to understand   
loneliness. And seeking to assuage it to some extent, I traveled the   
length and breadth of the known world, seeking teachers, and taking   
students.  
I will never stand by my sister as she struggles to bear a child, and   
take the babe as it emerges from her loins, holding it up that she may   
see the fruit of her labor. I will never be with her as she strives to   
raise that child, helping to guide, protecting and teaching.  
And yet, in a way I am freed by that, to name myself mother's brother to   
all of my best students.  
The bard in the new Island of the Mighty, to whom I told all the tales   
of the deeds of my race that he might weave them into one great song; as   
long as men sing that song and read its story in books, all of those   
great heroes and their kinfolk will never die.  
The healer in Campania; he is long forgotten by history, and yet his   
deeds in their time were well worth an epic to stand with those of Homer   
and Vergil and Taliesin.  
Merlion Emrys, in an island so changed by time and circumstance that it   
was barely recognizable as mine. He failed of some of his deeds at the   
end; and yet by his work a light was helped to stay lit for a little   
while, and the king he served came with his court and his Companions to   
the Summer Country at last.  
Malgis, in a land that was once Gaul. You would have liked her, Sae; she   
was the first woman I ever took as a student, and stubborn enough to   
learn the spell of shape-changing if she could not be accepted as a   
female magician.   
Kinta, once a slave in the empire on the River Niger south of the   
African Desert.  
And many more -- so many that to name them all would take long and long,   
and yet all dear to me.  
It is true, that if one lives long enough, almost everyone will come to   
remind you of someone you knew before. Your friend Nanaka; though the   
name is different, and the face also, in her I see the Queen who raised   
my cousins, and Malgis' cousin Theotrade.   
Your Aburatsubo-sempai is younger and more... innocent is the only word   
that I can find, and yet his every move and speech recalls my Egyptian   
teacher Min-nakht, who despite his age and despair at the changing world   
still had cool fruit juice brought to him every morning by servants   
chosen for their personal beauty. While Aikawa Akane might almost be   
Nimue, Emrys' impulsive, reckless student who outpaced her lessons in her   
desire to learn more and faster and ended in accidentally imprisoning   
him; she was very beautiful.  
And your Takakura-sempai; I have seen many like him in my long life.   
Apparently weak and driven by desires and yearnings, yet there is a core   
of strength and kindness there; if you truly want him, I shall assist you   
however I may. Simply reserve to an old man the right to think that you   
might have commanded better.  
But you, Sawanoguchi Sae: whenever I look at you, I see only you. Not   
always the wisest, not always the strongest; but your heart is one of the   
deepest and purest I have ever encountered, and your will to go on trying   
one of the greatest. Believe in yourself and your power, and know that   
you are truly my sister-daughter, no matter the mere biological   
relationships involved.  
Sleep well, Sae.  
  



End file.
